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All tournament matches must be at a 3-day per participant time limit in the app. (That means each match could end up lasting up to 6 days.)

Competitors will initially be split into 16 pools of 6 competitors each.

Each week of the tournament, each pool will play a simultaneous round robin (every member of the pool playing every other member of the pool once). That means each competitor will be playing 5 matches at a time.

Each round will be in the style of a "Limit of 2 Big 4" (or 2B4) tournament. This means that you can only play as the Big 4 (Benders, Guild Dwarves, Phoenix Elves, or Tundra Orcs) for up to two of your matches. If a competitor fails to limit their Big 4 usage to no more than two games each round, they will be disqualified. You may play as the same faction more than once each round as long as you limit your Big 4 usage to two matches. You could even play as a non-Big 4 faction 5 times if you want!

At the end of the week, the top 2 competitors in each pool and 4 wild cards will move on and be reorganized into 6 pools of 6 players each, and the process will repeat for those competitors.

At the end of week 2, the top 2 competitors in each pool will combine for the final 2 pools.

At the end of week 3, the top 2 competitors for both of the final pools will participate in a 4 competitor playoff.

The 2 winners of the semi-final matches will go on to play a final match to be crowned the champion. Also, the losers of the semi-final matches will play for 3rd place. For these matches you may use any of the factions, but you MUST play as 2 different factions.

Results of each match must be reported in this thread only. For all other discussion, post HERE.

Try to post ALL your results for that week at the same time. This will help me greatly to keep track of everything. You may use the discussion thread for discussion about the tournament. Please do not post anything other than signing up and results on the Signup/Results thread.

Registration

Each person is limited to ONE registration.

To register, reply to this thread with your intention to compete, your Playdek ID (NOT GameCenter), and if you are playing on iOS or Android

Only the first 96 people to register will be admitted to the tournament. For any others, a wait list will be compiled. If anyone drops out during registration, spots will open up and the first person on the wait list will be admitted in their place. No substitutions are allowed once the tournament begins.

Starting Matches and Time Limits

Pools for the week will be posted each Sunday evening, so make sure to watch for them then.

Each competitor needs to commit to check the pools each Sunday night / Monday morning to befriend their 5 fellow pool-mates through the app/invite to matches/accept matches/start matches, so that all matches are underway by Monday evening.

All matches must be 3-day matches. The result will be that each player gets up to 3 days of time and so each match could last up to 6 days.

If there are problems getting a match started, it's critical to keep me in the loop by Private Messaging (PMing) tortugatron to make sure we work it out properly.

Finishing and Reporting Matches

At the conclusion of each match, both competitors are required to post the results of the match in the official tournament thread (this thread) including the following details: who won and which faction each player used.

Try to post ALL of your results for that week at the same time. It will be easier to keep track of everyone’s results that way.

If only one competitor posts the results, their results will be trusted as the truth.

If no results have been posted by Sunday afternoon at the end of the week, both competitors are in danger of forfeiting the match. (Both would take a loss.) If there are problems during the week, stay in communication with me (via PM) to avoid a forfeit.

Competitors are encouraged (but not required) to report on how the match went, what kinds of deck builds were seen, etc, but make sure to do so in the discussion thread linked HERE.

Pools and Tiebreakers

At the end of each week, the top 2 ranked competitors in each pool will move on to the next round (and at the end of the third week, a 4 person playoff will occur).

Pool rankings will be determined by pool record for that week (i.e. 5-0, 4-1, etc).

The first tiebreaker used will be something called your Match-Up Differential (MUD). See below for details.

After that, the second tiebreaker will be Head-to-Head within the pool.

The third tiebreaker will be overall win percentage for the entire tournament (this tiebreaker will not apply during the first round).

The fourth tiebreaker will be your overall MUD for the entire tournament (this tiebreaker will not apply during the first round).

The fifth tiebreaker will be Rank of Factions (ROF), having each faction assigned a rank and adding them all up. The highest sum of ranks will move on. Rankings are as follows: 1-Tundra Orcs, 2-Guild Dwarves, 3-Phoenix Elves, 4-Benders, 5-Jungle Elves, 6-Cave Goblins, 7-Mountain Vargath, 8-Cloaks, 9-Vanguards, 10-Fallen Kingdom.

Forfeiting and Disqualification

Forfeiting any match for any reason is acceptable and not considered unsportsmanlike, but be sure to post the results in the tournament thread nonetheless and communicate with your opponent to be sure they didn't miss the forfeiture. A forfeited match counts as a loss for you and a win for your opponent.

For calculating your MUD, you will get a 0 for any match where play hasn't yet started before the forfeiture.

The tournament organizer reserves the right to disqualify any competitor for any reason he deems necessary. Any sort of cheating will not be tolerated.

Those who are disqualified automatically forfeit any unresolved matches, will not move on to the next pool and are not eligible to win the tournament.

Schedule

Initial pools will be posted Sunday morning on August 17th. All week one matches should be rolling by Monday evening. If there is a problem, let me know.

2nd round pools will be posted Sunday evening, August 24th, pushed back at most one day (announced in advance). All week two matches should be rolling by the following evening. If there is a problem, let me know.

The 3rd round pool will be posted Sunday evening, August 31st, pushed back at most one or two days (announced in advance). All week three matches should be rolling by the following evening. If there is a problem, let me know.

The semi-final matches will be posted Sunday evening, September 7th, pushed back at most one or two days (announced in advance). These matches should be rolling by the following evening.

Upon conclusion of both semi-final matches, the 1st and 3rd place matches will be announced and should be rolling within a couple days.

Match-Up Differential (or MUD) was devised for comparing players with the same win/loss record. Some match-ups are easier than others, and therefore some wins are harder to pull off than others on average. MUD makes sure that those who had to play as FK vs PE or VG vs GD are recognized as having worse match-ups to deal with than someone who played TO vs JE for example. I have to thank thenobleknave for helping me simplify my idea of Rank of Match-Up (RoMU) into MUD, which doesn't rely on if you win or lose, you simply just get a score.

To calculate your MUD, locate the faction you used on the left hand side, follow across until you get to the column for the faction you faced, and then add all of your matches together. A positive value means that the match-up was statistically harder for you than it was for your opponent. A negative value means it should have been easier for you. The MUD for a match is the number of percentage points you can add to 50% to determine how likely it was for your opponent to beat you.